Life is Heald: Driven insane in a one-horse open sleigh

Our family was on our way home from Orlando when I thought some Christmas music would be nice. I found a radio station, but before the first bell could jingle or Rudolph could shake that head cold, all three boys reached for their headphones and iPods.

This frosted my shorts in a decidedly non-Yuletide manner, particularly since we had just taken the three Scrooges to Universal Studios for a Christmas visit. I didn't think a little family caroling was too much to ask for in return. When I heard (c)rap music coming from one of their headphones, I summoned my inner Grinch.

"When Fifty Cent, Sammy B. Anthony, Buffalo Nickleback or any your other currency-inspired heroes puts out a Christmas album, we'll listen to that (no we won't), but until then, we listen to this!"

For an hour, we cruised along listening to Christmas music and whenever I checked on the boys, I saw three garden gnomes sitting at attention, dutifully enjoying the music of the season. I had decided that an hour was penance/patronage enough, and was about to tell the boys they could use their iPods, when I noticed something odd. All three of them had their heads cocked at such an angle as if they were watching the countryside go by. This was a red flag because we've driven through some very beautiful scenery before when I've damn near had to resort to a guillotine to get them to raise their heads from whatever particular electronic idiocy was the addiction of the month.

I zeroed in on the weak link and blurted out his name, causing his head to jerk toward me, thus exposing a hidden, single ear-bud cord running down the side of his head. Beautiful scenery my arse. Upon seeing that one of their own had been caught red-eared with the goods, the other two simultaneously snatched the cords from their ears in a juvenile effort to avoid being sentenced as adults. The court would afford no such leniency. It would be max-volume Christmas music to the bitter end, eyes straight ahead.

Another hour of Christmas music ensued and a check on the inmates revealed two with glassed-over eyes and one foaming slightly at the mouth. I was making my point in grand style. The only glitch was that I was driving myself insane as well. (I need to ask anyone traveling south on Interstate 75 near mile marker 188 to be on the lookout for my nose because it's right about there where I cut it off to spite my face.)

My mind was numb from all the Christmas music and it started going to dark places while analyzing the lyrics in an effort to amuse itself. Some people have a deviated septum that makes them snore; I have a deviated cerebellum that makes me think weird stuff.

For example, a third serving of "Jingle Bells" had me wondering if "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way" was perhaps some type of code dialogue an elf lady-of-the-evening and her customer might use to avoid the elf vice cops.

I knew "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer" was going to get bullied based on his name alone. I mean, who does that to an animal? When I realized it was probably Santa, and that he was responsible for "Blitzen," "Vixen," "Donner" and "Dancer" as well, I just figured most of the candy cane inventory had been melted down for Santa's schnapps stash, a stash surely sampled substantially before naming the herd.

In a nod to the feminists, I wondered why we should accept the fact that "Frosty" is a snowMAN. You might get somewhere debating the unisex nature of a hat and pipe, but when you consider Frosty is made out of giant snowballs, well…

When a second onslaught of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" attacked from the speakers, I realized all men can trace our lousy gift-giving reputation back to this one dude. For four straight days, this guy gives his girl an ever-increasing number of birds and never says jack about who's cleaning all this up. Sure, he buys some good will on day five with those five golden rings (I guess the Olympic rings were "display only"), but then he's right back to dumping birds on her for two more days.

I don't know what the "eight maids a milking" was all about unless they were blowing it out on New Year's Eve with an eggnog-kegger. Then he brings nine ladies over, dancing ones no less, and I can assure you, ain't no woman gonna be down with that. Next day, he orders up "10 lords a leaping." Who, exactly, are they for? I've got no doubt what they were leaping over, what with all those birds around, but it's getting a bit crowded in here, the fire marshal is on line three, and now we have to squeeze the white elephant of sexual preference into the room to boot.

And just to finish up and show you how backwards this guy was, the last thing he orders up is the music with 11 pipers and 12 drummers. I guess the nine chicks and 10 fellas were all just dancing and leaping about to the voices in their heads.

After that song ended, "Chestnuts roasting on an Open Fire" was next. I couldn't take that chance. I switched over to talk radio.

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Kevin sent out his Christmas newsletter to all of his friends and family, but both of them came back with no forwarding address, so it's on his blog at LIFEisHEALD.blogspot.com. He can be reached at LIFEisHEALD@yahoo.com.